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Have you been thinking about swapping your regular old cornflakes and milk for a smoothie bowl?

Healthy eating has been a hot topic for a while now. Thanks to the popularity of super foods and luscious pictures of plant-based power meals, health food has shrugged off its musty, granola-hippie image. A new breed of healthy food blogs inspires tons of people all over the world to tune up their eating habits and energize their body from the inside out.

But many of us don’t know where to start. Eating healthier can seem overwhelming, especially with all the conflicting information about nutrition around. Plus, we’re creatures of habit and changing our habits comes with challenges.

So how can we adopt a wholesome style of eating that will last?

Who better to ask than the health experts and recipe creators who showed us that good food is so much more than nibbling on lettuce sans dressing?

Here are the finest tips on how to start improving your diet from your favourite food bloggers!

When you’re chronically ill, you’ll probably experience times when you feel like you’re adrift in a sea of pain, fatigue and debilitating symptoms.

In the distance, you can see people running and playing on the beach. But you’re too far out for them to hear you cry for help.

Confidently you start swimming towards the shoreline. It’s tiring and progress is slow, but you’re getting closer with every stroke.

Then, all of a sudden, an undercurrent gets you off course. You desperately try to fight it, but the pull of the water is just too strong. With every passing minute you’re drifting further out into the ocean.

Suddenly you find yourself in rough water. The waves seem to be getting higher by the minute and you’re struggling to keep your head above water. You’re cold, wet and exhausted from treading water and you start to panic. What’s happening? What should I do? How do I get out of here?

With all your might you try to push the thought of what might be hiding under the surface out of your mind.

Instead, you start pondering on solutions. Do I try to swim against the current and put all my power into peddling back to where I meant to go? Do I save my energy and drift along to wherever the wind and water takes me? Do I make a courageous attempt to dive through the oncoming waves, even though I have no clue how to do that or where I’ll end up?

The truth is, I don’t have the answer. Unlike the real world, there are no safety guidelines for navigating the sea of chronic illness.

If you want to eat healthily, making your own meals (most of the time) is not an option but a necessity. It’s the best way to have a say in the ingredients, add variation to your overall diet and limit your intake of refined sugar, trans fats and artificial flavours.

Now, I love cooking. And I love all the amazing, wholesome recipes on food blogs these days. But honestly, after a long day of running around after a one-year old, squeezing in writing and household chores during naps, it sometimes feels like too much effort to cut up tons of veggies and spend an hour behind the stove.

You’ve probably felt the same way when you’ve had a tiring day, whether that’s because of work, illness or way too active kids.

And while it’s tempting to just shove a pizza in the oven whenever you’re too tired to cook, as a rule it’s better to find a healthy alternative to ordering takeout or heating up microwaved meals. Processed foods often contain too much salt, too little veg and an addictive combo of high sugar/high fat. And frankly, most convenience meals are just plain bland in taste compared to a home cooked dinner.

So let’s have a look how you can still put a nutritious meal on the table when you’re running low on energy.

Summer is officially over and schools are back in session all over the world. It marks a new beginning, a fresh start to rebuild healthy habits after an indulgent summer break with one too many glasses of wine and lazy days in the sun.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with living life and treating yourself. As Hayley from Full of Life rightfully points out, what’s the point of working hard to feel as healthily as possible, if you aren’t doing anything aside from obsessing about your diet and workout plan?

But when it comes to ‘bad’ habits, there’s often a sliding scale. It starts innocently, with big BBQ’s and ice cream cones on the beach and staying up way too late and skipping yoga class, “because it’s summer, we’re on vacation, let’s live a little” (and you should!).

But then the holidays are over and all of a sudden you find yourself mindlessly eating a bowl of cookie dough ice-cream in front of the TV every night and it becomes harder and harder to break a habit you didn’t mean to have in the first place.

This time of year, with the changing of the seasons and faux back-to-school feel, is a fitting moment to re-examine your health habits, let go off what isn’t working and embrace new things.

So here are 11 expert strategies to get back on track with a healthy lifestyle.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

– Marcel Proust

There’s something good in every day.

It doesn’t always feel that way and that’s ok. Some days the pain of living is just too much to notice anything else. Other times you’re just too tired to care. It’s hard to pick up the subtle signs of bliss when the noise of everyday life drowns out the quietness within you.

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The Health Sessions

Your weekly dose of in-depth advice on a healthy lifestyle and coping with chronic illness.

About me

I’m a psychologist living with chronic illness. I want to help you feel as energetic, symptom-free and happy as possible, by showing you how to create lasting health habits and by giving you advice on how to cope with (chronic) health problems.